The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

“There’s none of that.”

“None.”

“Okay.” Already in the sweats she was planning to sleep in, she lay back against the pillow she’d brought in from her bed and pulled an afghan over her bare feet. “There’s a little bit of regret.”

“Tell me about it.”

She wasn’t sure she could. “I don’t know. I’m not sorry for choosing Blake. Not sorry I might be pregnant.”

“What, then?”

“I just…maybe…it was difficult, you know?” She finally said the words she’d spent forty-eight hours trying to avoid. And this was why she hadn’t called her friend. Becky always knew. Always identified the things that Annie would prefer to hide away.

They were always the issues that, if left to fester, would get in the way of her happiness.

“Hard in what way?”

“To have him so close again, and then gone. I feel as if I’ve just lost him all over again.”

Tears filled her eyes as she gave voice to the emotions she’d been trying to ignore. As though, if she didn’t acknowledge them, pretended not to feel them, they couldn’t hurt her.

“Ah, sweetie, this was exactly what I was afraid of.”

“And you were right, Bec. I should have seen this coming. I’m an idiot.”

“No. You’re a woman who loved deeply and possibly forever. I think that on one level, you did see it coming, but there was this other part of you, obviously a bigger part, that needed to make love with Blake again. And that’s why you did it.”

Annie thought so, too. She just didn’t know what to do about that.

“I can’t get back with him.”

“Has he asked you to?”

“No, and he’s not going to.”

“You could ask him.”

“I can’t, Bec. You know that. Blake’s reserve hurt me so much it made me crazy—and then jealous. I can’t live like that. I can’t do that to him. And even if I could, I can’t spend my life with someone who won’t tell me he loves me. I spent too many years feeling abandoned and rejected.”

“Your father’s suicide had nothing to do with you, you know.”

“Of course I know that, but it’s as if I never quite believe it. If only I’d been more…something…Maybe it would have been enough to keep him alive, given him a reason for living.”

“You just have to keep telling yourself that isn’t true until you finally start believing it. You’ve been to all the classes and counseling sessions and read all the books, Annie. You know that suicide is the result of a person being in a place where the pain is worse than the coping skills. Period. It has nothing to do with anyone else.”

“Unless something about me contributed to his pain and the loss of his coping skills.”

“And what would that have been, sweetie? You were thirteen. And he was a manic depressive who went off his medication.”

Annie had a tendency to forget that part sometimes. “I’ve never understood why he did that,” she said now.

“Have you asked your mother?”

“Of course not. She practically had a nervous breakdown after Dad died. I’ve never dared broach the subject with her.”

“It was a long time ago, Annie.” Becky’s soft voice was warm, and filled with compassion. “She’s had a lot of time to recover. I bet she could handle that question now.”

Annie rejected the idea immediately. But then she thought over Becky’s words. It had been a long time. And she’d just considered the notion last week about how her mother might have made some changes that Annie had somehow overlooked.